But reader, do not be deterred. Sixteen-year-old schoolgirl Nao Yasutani is there to guide you through A Tale for the Time Being, and her voice is the heart and soul of a very satisfying book.

We're introduced to Nao through struggling memoirist Ruth (the character, not the author — though there are noteworthy similarities). Ruth discovers Nao's belongings washed up on the beach of the sleepy British Columbia island where she lives with her husband, Oliver. They speculate that it is debris from the tsunami that ravaged Japan in 2011.

Among the items, packed in a Hello Kitty lunchbox preserved by a barnacle-crusted zip-lock bag, is a World War II-era wristwatch, letters written in indecipherable Japanese, a French composition book and, most importantly, Nao's secret diary, written in English. (We discover that Nao grew up in America before returning to Japan.)

The diary is constructed to look like a copy of Proust's A la recherché du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time), which is an apt place for Nao to tell her story to her unknown reader, because the first thing she divulges is that she plans to commit suicide. "I think it's important to have clearly defined goals in life, don't you?" she writes. She sounds positively chipper about the whole thing.

What becomes of Nao? Does she go through with it? Does she die in the tsunami? Not only is Ruth riveted, but she feels a connection that transcends reader-writer.

In her journal, Nao's intent is to write the life story of her 104-year-old anarchist feminist Zen Buddhist nun grandmother. It will be the one thing she has accomplished in her life. Instead, she scribbles page after page in purple gel pen about her own tragic life, and it's in this candid narrative that Ozeki's novel shines.

Her tales of extreme bullying — Nao's teacher and classmates completely ostracize her and pretend she's dead, and later she's the victim of a humiliating sex-crime viral video — are told with candid detachment. After her father's second failed suicide attempt, she can only chastise that if he's going to do something, he should at least follow through with it.

Conversely, Nao articulates her connection to Buddhism with mature clarity. Zazen meditation, she writes, is to "enter time completely." She gently bathes her grandmother and helps shave her head. She admires her great-uncle Haruki, who was forced to become a kamikaze pilot during World War II but wrote a secret dissident diary in French.

The teenage tone rings true, right down to a few well-placed "OMG!"s. And it's this tone that grounds the novel, which integrates Nao's story with those of Ruth and Nao's great-uncle.

Ozeki's book is unique, but it's also familiar. The contemporary Japanese style and use of magical realism is reminiscent of author Haruki Murakami, particularly his 1997 book, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.

What separates A Tale for the Time Being is that it's topical and timely. Not only does the 2011 tsunami play a role, but Sept. 11 and a fascination with the "Falling Man," climate change and conservation issues all make appearances.

Such a disjointed novel works only when everything comes together, interwoven in a series of aha! moments. Much of Ozeki's work does just this, so it's disappointing when certain elements do not fit in with the greater work. At one point, Nao works as a call girl and can do so only if she dresses in her client's business suit during the deed. Ruth's husband, Oliver, muses for pages about alternate realities and Schrodinger's cat. The former is so random and the latter, such an unnecessary stretch. It leaves the reader wondering, why?

"In reality, every reader, while he is reading, is the reader of his own self," Ozeki writes, quoting Proust. Like Ruth, we will never meet Nao. But her story is one that we'll think about for a long time.

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